Robert Redford is sitting in a Toronto hotel suite on a sunny September late afternoon, munching on Popchips and talking about Les Misérables.

Victor Hugo’s story of ex-convict Jean Valjean’s years on the run from determined police Inspector Javert was one that had an indelible early impact on the 76-year-old actor-director.

“As a kid, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I don’t know why. It just got to me,” said Redford as he sat with a small group of journalists a few hours before the premiere of The Company You Keep at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. The movie returns for a theatrical run April 26 at the Varsity.

Redford directs the political dramatic thriller based on Neil Gordon’s 2003 novel. He also stars as a former member of the late-1960s and ’70s radical anti-Vietnam war movement the Weather Underground, forced out of hiding to go on the run with his young daughter (America’s Got Talent’s Jackie Evancho in her first screen role). He’s pursued by a crusading reporter (Shia LaBeouf) who won’t let up.

The similarities with Les Miz drew Redford to the film since, as he explains, it all comes back to the story when choosing projects. That’s the main motivator for the star of The Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Three Days of the Condor and All the President’s Men, founder of the Sundance Film Festival and Oscar-winning director of Ordinary People.

Now Redford, among the biggest movie stars of the past 40-plus years, reluctant Hollywood heartthrob in the 1960s and ’70s and poster boy for screen outlaws, finds himself in the same boat as the new generation of filmmakers he champions at Sundance. He’s out selling his independent film at TIFF and later joked about the situation in his opening remarks at Sundance in January.

So what makes Redford take on an indie project with “an extremely low” budget like The Company You Keep?

“For me, the essential word if I’m going to be doing something is story. What’s the story, where’s the story?” said Redford.

“And while I have a lot of admiration for all kinds of new techniques to sell a point, to make an impression; fast cutting, cross cutting, digital works, special effects…” His voice trails off. Point made.

“She’s here?” he asked. “I was really on her when all that happened. I was very, very keyed into her, how intelligent she was, (how) her elegance and intelligence could be committed to such a cause was really fascinating to me, as opposed to someone who is just wild.”

The Company You Keep forces characters once active in the antiwar movement, played by Redford, Susan Sarandon and Julie Christie, to look back on what they did in decades previous and reflect on what it means to their lives now.

“I was emotionally sympathetic with that cause at that time because that was my time,” said Redford. “I was starting a career in New York, an actor starting a family, and at that time, I had to make a choice. But I was very sympathetic to the cause.”

Would he have been a revolutionary?

“That’s speculation,” Redford replied with a small shrug. “I think probably because my whole life I have had that slightly outlaw sensibility. I have always had trouble with authority, which when I was younger got me into a lot of trouble.”

As director he also helped to cast the film, and Redford said he was determined to hire the notoriously reclusive Christie, who he had seen in Sarah Polley’s Away From Her. Christie fought Redford all the way.

“She did everything she could to prevent me casting her. So I called Sarah (Polley) and said, ‘Jesus, am I just going uphill? Is it a Sisyphus thing?’ and she said, ‘No, she does what she does. She fights it.’”

It’s a mindset not unfamiliar to Redford, who said that, like Christie, “I have always been selective about what I do.” He has spent much of his career turning down roles he thought pigeonholed him as a Hollywood pretty boy.

“I found myself doing the same thing,” he recalled. “The Way We Were I turned down three times. I didn’t want to be a model. I didn’t want to be a Ken doll to Barbra Streisand.”

When director Sydney Pollack suggested they collaborate to give his character a flaw, then Redford signed up for the 1973 romantic drama.

“She and I had similar attention as actors in the early ’70s,” said Redford of Christie. “There was a dark side to that, so I felt a certain kinship with her.”

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